


(our love is) a hundred pitchers of honey

by schweet_heart



Series: Pornalot Entries 2016 [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 1920s AU, Barebacking, Challenge #2: Rare, Egyptology AU, Historical AU, M/M, Magical Realism, PWP, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Pornalot 2016, Unsafe Sex, archaeology AU, remix eligible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7836673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Egypt, 1920. It's too hot to work, so Merlin and Arthur find other ways to occupy themselves instead. Meanwhile, the desert waits.</p><p>Written for Pornalot Challenge #2: Rare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(our love is) a hundred pitchers of honey

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [_The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart_](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-forgotten-dialect-of-the-heart/) by Jack Gilbert.

The desert is white with heat. Arthur is trying to pay attention while Emrys lectures him about the value of a rare pottery shard they found this morning, but instead all he can focus on is the droplet of sweat currently making its way down Emrys’ neck, and the uncomfortable way his shirt is sticking to his body. Emrys, too, seems distracted — he keeps pausing unnecessarily to look up at Arthur, as though losing track of the conversation. He holds the earthenware fragment out for examination and Arthur bends close as if to inspect it, but in reality his eyes track the pale blue confluence of veins that meet at the base of Emrys’ wrist like rivers. Somewhere there is a tick-tick-tick of dung-beetles in the sand. The tent is stifling.

 

 

Outside, heat haze shimmers over the camp like a veil, and the horizon presses close against them. It makes Arthur think of his mother, the light dresses she used to wear when she came out to the digs with his father, the way they’d settle softly around her body when she bent to sift through the sand with her fingers. That was many years ago now, before she died, before Arthur was sent away to grow up under the pale anaemic sun of her native country, but whenever he thinks of home this is what he remembers: the land, its terrible thirst.

 

 

It’s too hot to eat. At midday, Arthur calls a halt and lets the men retreat to the shade to wait it out, leaving orders for them to return to the dig at dusk. He catches Emrys’ eye as he turns towards his tent and the linguist follows him without speaking. Arthur begins to undress without looking at him, peeling back the white linen shirt and singlet, pulling off his socks and boots.

“It’s too hot for this,” Emrys says, sliding off his suspenders one by one with small flicks of the elastic.

“It’s always too hot for this,” Arthur says. “It’s a fucking desert.”

Emrys laughs, and steps closer. His hands on Arthur’s skin are cool and make him think of the rushes that crowd around the water at oases, thin and straight-edged. His mouth tastes of spices.

“osculetur me osculo orsi sui qui meliora sunto obera tua vino,” he murmurs in Latin.  _Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine._

They use the pitcher of olive oil set aside for cooking, warm from sitting so long in the sun. Emrys’ face is full of concentration as he pours, trailing the thick liquid over Arthur’s back.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Arthur asks, voice muffled from where his cheek is turned into the crook of his elbow. The oil feels strange, but Emrys’ hands are steady on his hips, and Emrys’ thumbs dip into the cleft of his arse and down, and Arthur groans low and deep, not caring that anyone might hear.

 

 

The language between them has always been that of bodies, which Emrys speaks just as well as words. He uses his fingers on Arthur until he writhes, hair plastered to his forehead and dripping with sweat, then presses into him, pushing past the first instinctive resistance and bottoming out with a slow roll of his hips. For a moment he hangs poised there, panting, his breath a hot whisper against Arthur’s ear: “Still think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Arthur grunts and lifts his hips in answer. “Prove it.”

Emrys bites his shoulder, and Arthur curses as his cock jerks. He was right; it _is_ too hot for this, they’re both of them sticky with it and half crazed, sweat pooling in the crevasses of collar and arse and armpit. Sand is ubiquitous, seemingly attracted by the oil. Close by, the buzz of a fly. Emrys thrusts erratically and without rhythm and Arthur rocks back against him, feels Emrys’ hands slipping over his skin, his own cock fat and hard against his belly leaving a smear of pre-cum.

Oil drips from his back onto the canvas. Emrys says, “Touch yourself. I want to see — “

“Yeah,” Arthur gasps. “Yeah, okay.”

His hand is slick and tight, and Emrys groans above him, fucking him harder now, adjusting the angle so that he hits just the right spot. Pleasure tightens Arthur’s balls and his straining thighs; head down, he feels almost dizzy, the atmosphere hot and thick in the still afternoon. He is close now, his nerve endings buzzing like a swarm of insects. Emrys drives into him once, twice, panting incomprehensible phrases into the back of Arthur’s neck, and then Arthur’s muscles clench as he comes into his own palm, his seed mingling with the oil trickling onto his wrist and down his forearm. Emrys spills into him a moment later, pressing damp kisses against the arch of his back, and they both of them collapse against the floor of the tent, extinguished, quenched, the parched air of the desert wicking the moisture from their skin.

 

 

At night, the desert turns cold and remote and regains its distance. Arthur sits by the fire and listens to the songs of the working men, a cup of Turkish coffee in his hands, watching the way Emrys sits with his body half turned towards him, firelight catching on the curve of his cheek like a warm crescent echo of the moon overhead. In the morning, the sun will rise, and the heat will begin all over again, but for now the land is quiet and sated, allowing them to rest.


End file.
